The present invention relates to a disc player and particularly relates to a front loading disc player provided with a disc conveying mechanism for automatically conveying a disk to a play position.
Known is a front loading disc player in which a disc, such as an audio disc having sound grooves on its surface, a digital audio disc on which PCM signals are recorded, or the like, is carried by a carrier which is arranged to be projected/accommodated out-of/into a player housing so that the disc can be completely accommodated within the player housing to thereby make it possible to effectively use the space on the upper surface of the disc player, for example, for mounting an article thereon, or the like.
There has been developed a front loading disc player of the type described above, which is provided with a projection/accommodation means for moving the above-mentioned carrier to automatically project/accommodate the carrier out-of/into the player housing so as to make it possible to save the time taken in loading/ejecting a disc to the utmost. In this front loading disc player, when a disc mounted on the carrier outside the player housing is brought into a play position or positioned on a turntable, the disc is conveyed in the two directions, that is, in the horizontal and vertical directions. To this end, the conventionally used carrier is constituted by two carrying members, one being a tray arranged to be reciprocatively horizontally movable relative to the player housing and the other being a container attached to the tray so as to be reciprocatively movable in the vertical direction. The container can be projected out of the player housing together with the tray and can carry a disc in cooperation with the tray.
When a disc mounted on the container is played in such a front loading disc player, the tray is moved horizontally together with the container so as to be accommodated in the player housing and fixed to the player housing at the same time, and succeedingly only the container is moved vertically so that the disc on the container is mounted on the turntable. To this end, complicated operation switching mechanisms for properly switching the operation between the tray and container are provided, resulting in an increased number of parts as well as in the increased cost as a whole.